Sacred Grove Diversity

Will increased area affect the species diversity of insects in Sacred Groves? A case study from the Western Ghats, India.

Introduction

Degradation and conservation of biodiversity are always considered as a global issue. The sum of various local species richness will reveals the effect of global environmental changes on the biodiversity (Obrist & Duelli 2010). The various taxa estimation will gives give the actual status of biodiversity and many available informations, such as geographic ranges of the species, population status, habitat and ecology, threats to the species, needs of conservation measures (Olson and Dinerstein 1998). The biodiversity of an ecosystem mutually related to functions, services and health of the ecosystem (Smith and

1998, Singh et al. 1998). Species composition and community structure depend to the fragmentation size and complexity (Tambat et al. 2001, Tripathi 2006, Khan et al. 2008). The Cultivation, shifting, over exploitation, grazing, monoculture, agricultural use of land, etc is gradually modifying on these ecosystems. The fragmentation size of the sacred grove depends with the antrapogenic activities and disturbance (Khan et al. 2008). The anthropogenic stress and area of the fragment can determine the species extinction, in sacred groves (Tripathi 2006). This brings the importance of implication of conservation measures of biodiversity and sacred grove

Sacred groves are istributed in many geographical continents (Hughes and Chandra 1998). In India, the conservation of sacred groves allied with traditional and religious belief (Gadgil and Vartak, 1976, Ramakrishnan 1996, Bhakat 1990). From the latest records of AERF almost 13,000 sacred groves are recorded (Malhotra 1998), which are distributed in Western Ghats, North East and Central India (Gadgil and Vartak, 1976, Burman 1992, Balasubramanyam and Induchoodan 1996, Tripathi 2001, Khumbongmayum et al. 2005). In Kerala it is almost 2000 (Rajendraprasad 1995). The productivity and ecological aspects of sacred groves were inspected (Induchoodan 1992, Menon and Sasidharan 1994, Rajendraprasad et al. 1998). Around 722 species of flora belonging to 217 families includes 474 genera were reported from 761 sacred groves (Balasubramanyan and Induchoodan 1996). The distribution of many endemic and endangered species to Western Ghats was recorded from the sacred groves of Kerala (Gadgil and Chandran 1992, Khan et al. 1997, Chandrashekara and Sankar 1998). The information about the insect fauna of sacred groves of Kerala is very little. The tropical insects show variation in their assemblages, diversity pattern and community structure according to the habitat fragmentation and disturbance (Hamer et al. 1997, Lewis 2001, Lewis and Basset 2007). The diversity assessment of